Steadfast
by fluffily
Summary: After discovering the truth about Light and Kira, his mother is broken. She wonders what would have happened had Light found the Death Note years later than he did. Of course he would have been more steadfast on his chosen path of justice. One-Shot


**I'm about done with writing for Twilight and InuYasha, never mind those darn fics I never did finish. Maybe, just maybe, you'll get lucky and I'll update… but in all honesty, I doubt it. This one's for Death Note, and to be safe, it's just a one-shot. I've never read a Death Note fanfiction or anything (I have watched the anime all the way through, though.), so I don't know how they are often done – each section of fics seem to have their own little codes referring to certain couples and such, which doesn't matter so much with this, but just for an example… let's just say that they all have their own atmospheres in many cases, okay?! I own nothing but the words themselves, and the idea. I'm not making any money off this, et cetera. On with the fiction.**

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She threw her arm out in an attempt to stop her fall, an attempt that had failed before she made the move reflexively. Her hand hit the wall with a thud that seemed to echo in her head, mercilessly refusing to let her keep her thoughts in order. What seemed like hours, days, or perhaps even weeks later, a second, louder thud joined the echo of the first as she thudded to the ground.

She was constantly having physical moments of weakness these days, more frequent as time wore on. But perhaps worse was the constant sensation of falling she had emotionally. Her husband was dead, her daughter might as well have been, and her son…

I was all his fault, and her mind kept running in circles back to the same conclusion. It was his fault, and it was her fault for ever having raised someone so evil.

He had been evil, yes – there could be no argument on that point. He had had so much potential, so much light in his future, just like his name, Light. He had been kind, empathetic, honest. Where had he gone wrong? Where had she gone wrong?

It was hard to stop herself from thinking that way, and perhaps impossible to stop imagining herself in a different world, a world where the sweet past had stayed strong and become the present and the future.

What would Light have done, if he had found the Death Note years later than in his final year of high school?

Of course he would have known better, of course he would have chosen a different path.

_**Go back to the past, let the past become the future, now the present…**_

_Light Yagami, red hair falling in disarray around his face, brown eyes wide as his heart, mind sharper than any knife, was thinking. Normally he was thinking about his cases – his place as the world's number one detective kept him very busy with such matters as that – but not now. _

_At present, he was wondering what made the world what it was._

_Not what shaped the mountains or carved great depressions filled with water – oceans, leaving others dry – canyons and valleys, nor what gave certain animals particular characteristics which others lacked._

_No, it was that he'd come to wonder why he, like so many others, had known from the beginning, without a doubt in their minds, that they would fight for good, as police officers, firemen, doctors, and so on, while more than that were on the side of evil, perhaps swayed from their original paths to walk with those who were meant to be there._

_Was anyone truly meant to be on that side of things, lurking in the shadows, plotting against all that people like Light stood for?_

_More than anything else, he wondered why it was certain people who became the victims of the ongoing war between the good and the bad. Was it because of how they had lived their lives, or was it the product of random selection? Why did some people switch sides, while others remained steadfast?_

_He could spend his whole life working as the number one detective on this planet of confusing ways, but he may never come to understand it._

"_All I really know," he murmured to someone who was never there, who would never be there, "is that I never want to stray from this path."_

_Somewhere in the world of past futures, darker ones, the ones that had never been given the chance to come about, a pair of red eyes, burning with a strange fire – perhaps hatred, or, even likelier, madness – narrowed, teeth like fangs clenched, and a cold voice, noticeably younger than Light's and yet unmistakably similar, growled two words like a death sentence, for that is what they were intended to be._

"_We'll see."_

_The black notebook plummeted from the sky, the pages white as a skull._

_It landed with an anticlimactic thud in front of the detective, who's eyes widened slightly, then narrowed when he took notice of the two words written on the cover of the book._

_He knelt, and in the red light of the setting sun, he read the rules and instructions written on the inside cover._

"_Ridiculous. Even if it could work… it's not for any human to possess this kind of power."_

_He seemed to recall something, a memory of a past that had never existed, and he smiled in a way one would when speaking to an amusing child. _

_He dropped the notebook, once and for all, and walked away, parallel to a metal fence, the red around him growing more pronounced, his own red hair seeming like fire, the fire of steadfast justice._

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**Hope you like that, it was just a little idea I had – this is probably the only fanfiction I'll ever write for Death Note, so review, would you please?**


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